And There Was Great Rejoicing

Some years ago, I started seeing "Woot!" as the predominant approbatory exclamation on Facebook.  I was never particularly keen on it myself (my contemporaries had been partial to "Yay!"), but in the past year or two, my own practices have evolved.  I've somehow developed the habit of typing "Huzzah!" to greet good news.

Now, "huzzah" struck me as very traditional - even perhaps a little retro - but when I used it in a work email recently, a retired colleague asked me to explain it.  Here's what I came up with on the spur of a not-particularly-awkward moment:

A cry of rejoicing and delight, similar to "Hooray!" or "Yippee!" or "Hallelujah!"
Frequently accompanied by the wholesale tossing of hats into the air, if the jubilant crowd happens to be wearing hats. 

I'm actually rather pleased with that.

But all this rejoicing also reminds me of the First Sally in Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad (translated by Michael Kandel):

This high-minded monarch also had a theory, which he put into action, and this was the Theory of Universal Happiness. It is well known, certainly, that one does not laugh because one is amused, but rather, one is amused because one laughs. If then everyone maintains that things just couldn't be better, attitudes immediately improve. The subjects of Ferocitus were thus required, for their own good, to go about shouting how wonderful every-thing was, and the old, indefinite greeting of "Hello" was changed by the King to the more emphatic "Hallelujah!" —though children up to the age of fourteen were permitted to say, "Wow!" or "Whee!", and the old-timers, "Swell!" Ferocitus rejoiced to see his people in such good spirits. Whenever he drove by in his destroyer-shaped carriage, crowds in the street would cheer, and whenever he graciously waved his royal hand, those up front would cry: "Wow!"—"Hallelujah!"—"Terrific!" 

~ ~ ~

So, what should we make of my three real-world contenders?  Their relative ages are just what we would expect.

Merriam-Webster online thinks "woot" or "w00t" has been around since 2002, and speculates for its etymology: "perhaps extension of WHOO entry 1, with t representing glottal closure."

"Yay, int." is much older, as it is apparently attested all the way back to 1963.  The OED online speculates: "Perhaps < yay adv., used as an exclamation, or < yeah adv. used similarly with alteration of ending (compare 'ray aphetic form of hooray int.)."

But in its entry for "huzza, int. and n." the OED has quotations as far back as 1573.  For etymology, it offers: "apparently a mere exclamation, the first syllable being a preparation for, and a means of securing simultaneous utterance of the final /ɑː/."  They go on to say:

It is mentioned by many 17–18th cent. writers as being originally a sailor's cheer or salute: ‘It was derived from the marine and the shouts the seamen make when friends come aboard or go off’ (North Exam. (1740) 617). It may therefore be the same as heisau! hissa! originally hauling or hoisting cries: see heeze v. quot. c1550 and hissa int. (German has also ˈhussa as a cry of hunting and pursuit, and, subsequently, of exultation.)